Certain wild bees for example, Megochile Rotundata, have been used to facilitate the pollination of alfalfa blossoms for the production of alfalfa seed. These bees appear to confine their pollen seeking activities to a small area surrounding their nests, where the eggs are laid and hatched. I have found that in order to provide nests wherein the bees may deposit their eggs in sufficient quantities to be effective, when hatched, to pollenize fields of alfalfa, it is desirable to have a nesting unit of a portable nature with capacity for holding several hundred eggs. These units are put in the field where the bees hatch and perform their pollenizing of the alfalfa.
It has been disclosed in the Barnes U.S. Pat. No. 3,191,199 that such portable units can be made by providing boards with grooves on one side and stacking the boards so that these grooves are closed by the ungrooved surface of an adjacent board. This patent discloses, so far as applicant knows, the most practical artificial nest for the desired wild bees, that, prior to my invention, has been known. Other prior bee nest devices are disclosed in the Barnes patent and in the patents to Green U.S. Pat. No. 2,593,296, Lawther U.S. Pat. No. 200,549 and Aspinwall U.S. Pat. No. 397,046. These are the only patent prior art that we know about. A search of the Patent Office records has not been made.
In wild bee nests of the type disclosed in the Barnes U.S. Pat. No. 3,191,199 it is necessary to have the grooves capable of being cleaned out after the larvae have hatched. It is also necessary to have the grooves in which the bees lay their eggs closed at one end.
It is the purpose of this invention to provide an improved nest made up of boards grooved on one side face, wherein all of the grooved boards are alike except for one end board which has no grooves in either face, and to provide a flexible sealing cover for one end of each of the grooves which cover is sealed to the edges of individual grooved boards over one end of the grooves and to the adjacent edges of the boards so that parasites cannot enter the grooves from their closed ends.
It is also a purpose of the invention to provide a novel clamping and supporting means capable of pressing the several boards together to make a rigid unit. The clamping means comprises a bolt rod and end plates that are readily removable and a flexible sealing cover that is also readily removable to leave the several boards free of each other for individual cleaning and reuse.